


The Dream Life

by LittleRaven



Category: Cinderella (1950)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28135107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: When her dreams come true, Cinderella realizes she can live them, and wonders at the opportunity. Every process of adjustment must start somewhere.
Relationships: Prince Charming/Cinderella (Disney)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Dream Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spyglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyglass/gifts).



“You'll take to palace life nicely, I'm sure!” Cinderella held Jaq gently in the palm of her hand. “Even if there is a cat," and Jaq looked as if he thought no such animal would be allowed in a home with decent humans in charge, "it will be a much nicer one than Lucifer, having better examples to follow." 

She wanted to think so, anyway. Cinderella had hoped for the best all her life, and given her new circumstances, true love and all, who was to say she had been wrong? Day after day of drudgery—and though she had known it was bad, she had not known, really, until now that it was all over. One night and the days had gathered into years before her eyes, the life she'd lived, wasted on stepmother, Drizella, Anastasia, and even Lucifer. 

Not wasted, Cinderella reminded herself. Jaq had been there, and Gus, and all the little mouse family, and Bruno. The birds too. They would not have been friends if she hadn’t been there. They might not even still be alive, although perhaps the thought didn’t give their cleverness enough credit.

“I won’t let any cat hurt you,” she promised. “Not after everything. There is no such thing as thanking you too much.” That, at least, she could be certain of. Her little friends might have survived without her, but she would not have her prince, or anyone else, without them. 

Jaq accepted this for now, softening as he always did when he listened to her. He was, Cinderella knew, an excellent listener. She set him down, continuing to pack the little clothes she’d made him and all the other mice, and the birds. They would get much fancier ones, bright and shining livery they would love, but that was no reason to leave these behind. If they chose to stop using them later, that would be different from her having left them here, forgotten, or even thrown away if her stepmother decided to hire a replacement for her. 

Would she even have found another human being to love, if she hadn’t had them? Would it have been on her mind, in her heart, to keep dreaming? Or would she have stopped during one of those days, all of a sudden when she was sewing on the buttons one of her stepsisters had ripped off her own clothes in a tantrum? It might have happened slower than that; time blending until she had forgotten what it was like to live in her own body, to take a moment to think about anything but her next task. That would have been the worst fate, Cinderella decided. It was one thing to deal with cruelty, and another to have it seep in like water into wood, so that it rotted and grew mold. She was not sure what she would have done then, whether she would have tried to attend the ball, or even thought to, and whether her fairy godmother would have taken an interest in a girl too sad to dream.

The possibility followed her all the way back to the palace. To the concern of her friends, her eyes were on the brink of tears when she arrived, which seemed rather silly; she hadn’t cried all throughout the years after her father’s death, until the occasion of the ball with her mother’s dress in tatters. Why cry now, when she had more reasons not to?

“Because you do have reasons to,” her prince told her in the privacy of her new quarters. Their quarters, she thought, _I am married,_ , and the tears fell. He let her cry, and that was good because she was not sure she could have stopped her tears before they had run their course, and she did not want to disappoint him so soon. They did stop on their own, after time Cinderella could not measure had passed. She relished the handkerchief he pressed against her cheek, closing her eyes at the feeling. 

“How does that make sense, when I’m so happy? I am happy,” she insisted, opening her eyes again, because it was true and she would not let him believe otherwise. 

“I am pleased to hear it,” he said gently. “I am. But happiness is cause for tears too.”

Yes, she remembered he had cried as they were married. It had not occurred to her to question it then, nor did it occur to her now. The conundrum, it seemed, was within herself. 

“But it was also sad. I was thinking, suddenly—what if I hadn’t even met you? I almost didn’t.”

She had not told him everything, the night of the ball. It had been so wonderful, and he so beautiful, and all she had wished was to stay in that moment for, if not the rest of her life—she could not have imagined the rest of her life—then at least until midnight. She had wanted to live in it, truly, the way she could not live back at the chateau, the way she only lived in dreams, or when she was with her animal friends. Cinderella could not have been Cinderella and still found joy in being with him, not if she looked back on her life enough that he could know it. 

Now, she did. As he listened, she watched him, feeling conscious in a way she never had of how she spoke, and what she told. It was different, speaking to someone who didn’t live with her and see her. Hadn’t lived with her and seen her, she corrected herself. Her godmother had been different too, but in another way. She had been there to solve an immediate problem; he was here to know her, and be with her, solving a problem that might otherwise have gone on the rest of her life for all she knew. “I suppose it was not as bad as it could have been, with all my friends there. And they helped me get out, so I could meet your Duke and he could find me for you.” Cinderella paused. “They even,” she added, having taken in his encouraging nod, “tried to get me here so that I could meet you in the first place. I wanted to, but I wasn’t going to keep trying, I was so busy, and they made me a new dress out of my mother’s.” The tears began to return, but remained in her eyes. “They really wanted me to go, but my step-family did not.”

That dress, still in tatters, was also among the things Cinderella had brought back with her. It was no longer merely old-fashioned; it was unwearable. But she could not have left it, anymore than she could have left the animal clothes. 

“Then I will thank them,” her prince Charming told her, “when next we meet.”

She smiled fondly. “I will be grateful for the rest of my life. To my godmother too; she’s the one who got me here in the end. Can you believe I didn’t even know I had one?” Her smile disappeared. “She was magical, you know. And all about helping dreams come true.”

“And this is your dream?” She was more conscious than ever of his watching her when she answered, “Yes, of course. I couldn’t have wanted more.” She took his hands in hers. “I only wonder, could I have known to dream it, to dream anything if life had been a little different—is that someone anyone would have wanted to help?” Even Jaq, Gus, Bruno, everyone else who had been there before the ball; would they have wanted to help her, or know her, if they had met her differently? 

“I can only speak for myself,” he told her, grave and smiling at the same time. “But if we hadn’t met at a ball, I hope we would have met somewhere else, on some other occasion. Because I cannot dream of you not being worth someone’s help, or of seeing you and not wanting to pay attention to you at once.”

It could not be an answer to a question of the lives she had not lived, and the things that had not happened, but it did answer the question of why she could cry now. Because she could. Because it would mean something, and looking back, she understood it always had, to those who had loved her. When she had cried in a torn dress, a dam had broken inside her. Now, there was no need for the dam at all. 

Yes, Cinderella thought. And now, too, she could restore her mother’s dress herself. She’d find another reason to wear it. The celebration of a future child, perhaps. Or she could wear it for its own sake, for a memory of one of the two human beings who had loved her before this. 

“Then I hope,” she said when she could speak again, “that if you have any cats, they are well-trained enough to leave my dear friends alone.” She giggled. 

Fortunately, the prince proved to be a good listener, and no harm was ever done to them. But she had already known, curling against his chest that first night after their talk, face in his neck, that he would always be one.


End file.
